From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2007-11-07T19:23:09+09:00
Subject: invoke_method, and things you "just have to know"

Hi --

I see that send! is gone from 1.9, and send is back to calling private
methods. OK... but there's now also invoke_method, which doesn't call
private methods if it has an explicit receiver but does if it doesn't.

My concern is that this is one of those things where you "just have to
know" which is which. It's like instance_eval and instance_exec: the
method names themselves don't tell you how they differ, so you just
have to memorize which one does what.

I've always had this problem with the boolean flags in things like
instance_methods(false). "false" doesn't tell you what's happening;
you just have to learn that there are two behaviors, and memorize how
they map to true/false.

I'd really like to see the amount of "you just have to know it" things
in Ruby reduced to zero. Of course, you always have to know
something... but I think it's much better when the method names tell
you as much as they possibly can. (send/send! seemed exactly right for
that; I don't know why it's gone.) But if anything, it seems to be
increasing in 1.9. At least, that's my impression.


David

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